Friday, September 27, 2013

I
consider myself to be unoffendable, especially when it comes to my geographical
background. Call me this, call me that- I don't care. For those wondering, I am
1/2 Spanish, 1/4 Irish, and 1/4 Belgian- spic,
dago, mick, waffle-lover (people don't really make fun of Belgians).
They're all fine with me, and you know why? To give the obvious quote by the wonderful
George Carlin, "They're only words." I appreciate a good insult if
it's done cleverly, no matter who the recipient is. But if it's something
stupid meant in a hurtful way, I just kind of feel bad for the insulter, who
probably has no idea what he or she is actually saying. And that's why we're
here today- to explain some common slurs and why they're actually not very harmful.

To
start with myself, spic wouldn't even
be accurate. It's a shortened form of 'Hispanic' and for some reason is
generally reserved for Central and South Americans. My relatives came from
Spain. So yeah, don't call me that, if only because it's inaccurate. Dago is an odd word the British used to
describe Spaniards, Italians, and/or the Portuguese. It's often used
"against" Spaniards as a shortened form of the name Diego. How mean.

I'll get to mick
in a little bit and, honestly, nobody makes fun of Belgians. They make waffles
and their beer is amazing and many people cannot find their country on a map.
However, they are sometimes referred to as Phlegms,
a homophone of Flems, meaning the Flemish, who make up only one part of Belgium.
Flemish is also one of Belgium's official languages and is really just a
strange mix of Dutch, French, and German. So go ahead, make fun of a cultured
place.

I said I'd get to mick,
and here it is: People try to insult the Irish by calling them micks. It should be noted that people
also fail at insulting the Irish by calling them drunks. Mick is the
verbalization of the 'Mc' found at the beginning of many Irish last names. It
means 'son of'. If your last name is McDonald, at one point in your lineage
some guy was Donald's son. The "slur" for Scottish people, Mac, follows the same idea. In fact,
many last names implore this method. Leif Ericson was the son of Eric The Red.
Faroese musician Eivør Pálsdóttir's ancestor was the daughter of someone named
Pál. Unless you're saying McBitch or Scumsdóttir, there is no harm. As a lovely
sidenote, my mother once called me a son-of-a-bitch without realizing she was
actually insulting herself. Irony. See how much fun words can be!?

For an unfun word, let’s go to nigger. The word nigger
has gone through many forms since its initial ‘niger’ word from the Latin. It
meant ‘color black’. ‘Niger’ means ‘black’ in many languages, as does negro, another “derogatory” word. Niger is even the name of an African country. The word nigger was originally not derogatory,
and at one time could be compared with today’s ‘dude’ or ‘guy’. Dude Jim. After
the slaves in America were freed, many took low-earning jobs in entertainment
by portraying clumsy, unsophisticated characters. This correlation gave the
word its common negative tone. The moral is, the word itself just means black.
That’s your skin color, and that’s OK with me.

While we’re on skin color, gringo refers to white foreigners, mainly according to Mexicans. It
means your skin color is white, and that’s also OK with me. White Americans are
also sometimes “pejoratively” referred to as crackers. Crackers are delicious, and we all know that being
associated with delicious food is not a bad thing. Black people and fried
chicken, the Chinese and rice, Belgians and waffles. Great! Anyway, crackers
were the primary food source of lower-class people in 16th-century
England. Some of those folks were sent to the penal colony now known as the
state of Georgia and the term came with them. Do you know who initially called
these people crackers? White folks!

All I can say about gook
is that, like the rest of these words, it is harmless. First of all, this word
has been used “against” Asians, various Europeans, and the English. How can one
word offend several nationalities? It doesn’t make sense. The origins of gook as we know it likely trace back to
Korea, which was originally called Hanguk [han-gook]. Or, during the Korean War,
Koreans often asked the question “Mi Guk?”, which somewhat-loosely translates
to “Are you American?” Americans thought Koreans were saying “Me gook!” and
began calling them gooks, which was
actually their word for Americans! Isn’t this crazy!?

Two words which should be thrown into this cornucopia of
controversy are faggot and dyke. The origins of faggot are hazy, but the word initially
meant ‘bundle of sticks’. This created the idea that the word’s etymology
derives from the days of witch-burning. When a witch was tied to a stake, he or
she was surrounded by ‘bundles of sticks’. Theorized but unproven, it is said
that homosexuals were burned on the lain faggots because they were “not good
enough” to be burned at the stake. Another theory suggests that old women who
gathered bundles of sticks were called faggots.
This somehow got transferred to effeminate and/or gay men. And in Robin Hood:
Men In Tights, when Rabbi Tuckman asks Robin if his “merry men” are faygeles, he’s *literally* asking if
they are little birds. So there- this got nowhere. If any or all of this is
true, I wonder why people say God is so against sticks and birds.If
nothing else, derogatory words are fair in that there’s at least one for every
group or type of people. Gay men had their turn, so now come gay women. Dyke is a shortened form of the word bulldyker, which was coined in the 1920s
by- gasp!- a black man. He was wondering why women were bulldyking, which meant getting women into bed with them. At the
time, that was a man’s term for a man’s job! Like faggots were originally women, dykes
were originally men. What is going on with these words!?

For one last little History lesson, when the (unfortunate)
influx of Italians hit this country, many of them did not have proper
documentation. Instead of sending them away, the immigration workers simply
wrote 'without papers' on the immigrants' entry forms. This was so frequent
that 'without papers' was shortened to WOP. Similarly, when Jewish people
entered America after some distasteful incidents throughout Europe, many of
them could not write their names in English on the entry forms. Instead, they
drew a circle. The Yiddish word for 'circle' is 'keikl' [kike-uhl]. So Italians
forget their IDs and Jews enjoy round shapes. I don't see the problem.

Actually, I do. The problem is with people who throw
these words around to make others feel bad. The emphasis, rather than the
meaning, is what makes a slur so hurtful. So, to quote myself from my first
‘literally’ blog post, stop using words whose meanings you do not know. And
stop being offended by words that really aren’t so bad. There are plenty of clever ways to insult people which don't rely on pointless shock-value.